The first thing I noticed when I moved to Colorado last year was the number of marijuana dispensaries. They're everywhere! After someone points out what the little green crosses mean, you notice them. Everywhere! I read a story that there are more marijuana dispensaries than Starbucks in Denver. And it's amusing to read the names: Rocky Mountain High Healthcare, Greener Pastures Healthcare, etc. The proprietors know MMJ was an absurd pretense to legalizing pot and they're happy to get in on the joke. Which, of course, was the argument conservatives made about dispensaries, which were in turn shrugged off as slippery-slope alarmism.

I heart Leadville, too. You guys should have hit up one of the mining-turned-gambling towns. They're quaint and a lot of fun.

Just south of Leadville off Route 24 are the remains of the Alpine Railroad Tunnel. It's a gentle grade hike to get there (along the old railbed), though I haven't been there in over a decade. The tunnel is collapsed on both sides now but there's a cool old ghost town up there.

Just a friendly recommendation. I just figure you two could a few birds with one stone: RR tunnels, hiking, Colorado, photography.

We drove through here, last summer, on our way from Durango to RMNP. I'd love to make an extended visit, but not live there - I preferred Gunnison. It's my understanding that Leadville's a great biking town - I believe there was a race in the area the day we were there...

Whoops. I got the date totally off! We were there August 4th. It says August 19th because of the photo processing date. I can't believe I got that wrong, considering how few days ago that would have been.

Sparse posting... if you really think that's what you're seeing... is attributable to another writing project and long bike rides.

>>I saw this kind of 'photoshop' in a photography magazine last evening. But when you alter it, are you losing a bit of reality? Which picture is closer to what you see in real life?<<

Do you really think all those building are leaning in real life? No, its severe lens distortion. If Ann were to correct the distortion she isn't altering reality just like Peano didn't alter reality by color balancing and improving the under-exposure in the original photo.

Small houses/buildings, in their day they were large. It was not until the 80's that homes began to stretch beyond 2000 sq ft. The home you live in toady would be considered a mansion back then. Also supplies were brought in by wagon trains with mules. The railroad did not show up until the 1880's. So getting supplies up the mountain was a task the average tourist misses. Look at the old parts of towns, the average home size was between 600-800 sq ft.

It is hard for some today to grasp that people live in those "little houses."

Do you really think all those building are leaning in real life? No, its severe lens distortion

Actually, yes. The buildings are on a slight angle relative to the street but the street is actually on an angle of about five degrees. AA lined up her shot with the street as the horizon. The better composition would be to align the camera with the buildings which are straight in alignment with the center of the earth.

I was not talking about the 'leaning' in my second comment. Asking Peano sincerely about the color composition/brightness and all that and what is close to reality. The first 'leaning' comment was tongue in cheek because Ann didn't frame it right. I feel silly to have to explain like this to you. But some people need clarification, I guess.

My Mother's father was a mining engineer in Leadville, and she and her brother did a part of their growing up there - it was a wild place even in the civilized years of the big mining outfits - and Grandpa built a house there with his own hands - I have pictures of the place. Happy to see the town is still kicking even a little. Not deep familial roots, just long ones.

Whoops. I got the date totally off! We were there August 4th. It says August 19th because of the photo processing date. I can't believe I got that wrong, considering how few days ago that would have been.

Sparse posting... if you really think that's what you're seeing... is attributable to another writing project and long bike rides.

There were just a couple of long gaps over the weekend. I figured you zipped on out to CO again.

Not busting your chops on the gaps BTW. You guys deserve your fun.

Jeff with one 'f' said...

Doc Holliday lived there and Oscar WIlde toured the mines.

You should swing by Glenwood Springs, where Doc is buried!

In a sanitarium. His last words, regarding the fact he didn't die of lead poisoning, "This is funny".

Oscar Wilde toured the West as a lecturer. When he played Dodge City, the cowboys thought he was a comedian and were going to hooraw him off the stage until Doc, Wyatt Earp, and Bat Masterson got up on stage and told the crowd that any trouble would start and end with them.

pm317 said... I saw this kind of 'photoshop' in a photography magazine last evening. But when you alter it, are you losing a bit of reality? Which picture is closer to what you see in real life?

---

If the camera's white balance was off, then it didn't capture the reality, whatever that is.

I know for certain, though, that this image has a heavy cyan/blue cast. That typically happens when the camera "thinks" it is seeing a sunlit scene when there's no direct sunlight. Cameras typically make that mistake when the photographer doesn't expose properly for the scene.

Cameras, like computers, are just machines. They do what you tell them to do. Tell them wrong, they do wrong.

I was down in Santa Fe, New Mexico at the exact same time you guys were in Colorado. That weather was all over New Mexico and produced some beautiful thunderstorms, although the rain that fell mostly evaporated before hitting the ground.

The Leadville airport at 9,934 feet is the highest in North America. It is surrounded by high peaks. Pilots are warned to climb to minimum safe altitude (14,800)before transitioning out of the area. Or you can fly the passes out, but you better be trained in mountain flying for this!

>>I was not talking about the 'leaning' in my second comment. Asking Peano sincerely about the color composition/brightness and all that and what is close to reality. The first 'leaning' comment was tongue in cheek because Ann didn't frame it right. I feel silly to have to explain like this to you. But some people need clarification, I guess.<<

I know what you weren't talking about. Also, I don't recall Peano asking a question; he offered a suggestion on color balancing.

You needn't explain anything to me especially since you really don't know what you're talking about. The leaning building are caused by wide-angle distortion and has little to do with how the photo was framed in the first place.

@pm317 -- I checked the exif data, and she was shooting on auto white balance. Not a good choice with that cloudy sky. The camera has a white balance setting for cloudy skies, and also manual white balance that allows you to set custom WB for the scene.

I don't think our learned hostess understands how to use those features. Her photos almost always have white balance problems.

>>@pm317 -- I checked the exif data, and she was shooting on auto white balance. Not a good choice with that cloudy sky. The camera has a white balance setting for cloudy skies, and also manual white balance that allows you to set custom WB for the scene.

I don't think our learned hostess understands how to use those features. Her photos almost always have white balance problems.<<

Exactly; she should be using the WB preset that matches the lighting conditions.

pm317 said... But most of Ann's pics are gorgeous in that her compositions are always very interesting.

Some of her compositions are interesting (not very), but there's a great deal more than composition to making a good picture. I've yet to see one that was gorgeous.

Even though she's using a small camera, it's a good one with capabilities far beyond what she seems willing to learn. She's a typical vacation/snapshot photographer. Don't credit her with more than she earns.

No knock against casual, careless shooters per se. But when they post their shots on the Worldwide Web and say "Oh lookee lookee!" they can expect to take a few knocks for their slipshod, don't-bother-my-blonde-head-with-details work.

Small world. I was in Leadville the same weekend and I flew in from Wisconsin! Landing at 10K feet was strange to a flatlander.(I got a certificate at the airport for piloting into America's highest airport) And that "little bike race" was only the LEADVILLE 100 Mountain bike race! Premier event. I rode the course, wicked hypoxic.

Oh. And by the way. Leadville will not be "small houseville" for long. With currancy devaluation and the ongoing commodity boom,the once silent Leadville mines are re-awakening.What's old is new again.

LOL, I will grant you that I use 'very' thoughtlessly sometimes. But I think it is ok for her to showcase her pictures on her blog and it is ok for you to comment the way you did. We can all learn a thing or two. She did inspire me to use my little camera and some day soon to pick up my paint brush to paint one of her many pictures I like. {BTW all the big camera people in my life have sneered at my pics too -- I try to show them and they are like, heh. But my husband is a fan, :)}

We went out to Colorado on vacation at about the same time as Meadhouse. One place we visited was Cripple Creek. It had a very cool mining museum which, among other things, stated that mining has resumed big time in the Cripple Creek area. The Cripple Creek and Victor mining company recently celebrated mining its 4 millionth ounce of gold (3 million since 2000).

I did an overnight in Leadville once and spent hours out with my camera. It's very photogenic. A treasure trove, in fact. Other picturesque little towns I enjoyed on that trip were Georgetown and Basalt.

You should swing by Glenwood Springs, where Doc is buried!

There are a couple of unique experiences to be had in Glenwood Springs. The enormous mineral pools and vapor caves are not to be missed. And although hardly unique, there are fine high altitude caverns accessible by tram.

At the risk of introducing an unfathomable idea, I'd like to suggest the possibility that someone who posts their vacation pictures might be saying "have a look at Leadville" rather than "have a look at my photography".

Anyone who gets his jollies griping about color balance would have a better time checking out some of the old Bloggingheads with Yellow Bob vs. Pink Ann. Ann's not as pink these days, but Bob's as yellow as ever.

Note the illuminated "OPEN" sign in the window of the Chamber of Commerce. You see these signs all over the place, yet to me there's something vaguely disreputable about them. They're the sort of things you expect to see in the front windows of pawnshops or massage parlors.

Photography is Althouse's artistic/creative outlet/obsession. Of course she is going to care about it. She isn't always aiming to make an accurate "snapshot". Sometimes she even gets surrealistic such as the shot of Meade sitting outside which featured a deck (outside) support seeming to support the table (inside) that Althouse was "tied" to. Very cool composition.

Mike and Sue said...Small world. I was in Leadville the same weekend and I flew in from Wisconsin! Landing at 10K feet was strange to a flatlander.(I got a certificate at the airport for piloting into America's highest airport) And that "little bike race" was only the LEADVILLE 100 Mountain bike race! Premier event. I rode the course, wicked hypoxic.

I disagree with the white balance criticisms. I use the sunlight white balance preset all the time because it is most wysiwyg - realistic. It is an artistic decision. The camera cloudy/shady preset is always worse in my experience. Frequently I set the color temperature in an image editor to get rid of a blue, gray, or "harsh white" (don't know how to explain it better) color cast. However sunlight causes a lot of contrast, hilights and shadows, and trying to correct the cloudy day colors without having the corresponding hilights and shadows can look horrible in my opinion.

I would however stronly suggest brigntening the pictures. That's also an artistic decision. I use the picasa downloadable image editor.

http://picasa.google.com/

On the tuning tab, use the sliders for fill light and hilights. It gives the pictures that georgous glow that separate amateur snapshots from art photos (in my opinion).

Most amateur photos are too dark. This is because the light metering standards come from the old days of film where you would make a print from a negative. The negatives were supposed to be too dark to prevent overexposure. Overexposure looks much worse than underexposure. You were supposed to fix the exposure when printing. With digital cameras, the camera file is like the negative and you should consider working with an image editor as the analog of making a print.

Anyone who wants an image editor that does layers but can't afford photoshop or has an old computer without the resources to run photoshop should look at gimp. It's free on the internet and there are tutorials for photo editing.

I use iPhoto. I have Photoshop but I prefer to use iPhoto. I do the adjusting on the computer, not in the camera. The key thing to do with the camera is choose a subject and frame the shot. That's what matters.

Really? Where did you read that? I photo-edited a biography of Wyatt Earp and never heard that story

@ Peano- Color correction is notoriously subjective There's a theory that people with different eye colors experience light (and color) in different ways I believe La Althouse is blue-eyed and may be more sensitive to certain colors than others. Also, she's a former art student and presumably has some training in color theory- I'm pretty sure she knows exactly what she's doing with color.

Acutally in the first picture the clouds are mostly gray. In the upper right I see a bit of green and in the upper left I see a bit of magenta. I think this is a problem with compact cameras. I have a compact camera that does this too. I haven't had that problem with my (cheap) dslr.

I am a 4th generation Leadvillite. It has a fascinating history, some bits of which were cited here. It had a rough and wooly side and also a very dignified and cultured side. There was an opera house--the Tabor Opera House--a a beautiful Clarendon Hotel. They were torn down during the bad times in the mid 2oth century. The burro race is more characteristic than the bike race. Lots of beautiful country around and mostly empty. Miss it all the time.

I do the adjusting on the computer, not in the camera. The key thing to do with the camera is choose a subject and frame the shot. That's what matters.

You might think your camera isn't adjusting color, but when you shoot jpeg, as you do, the camera does adjust color, depending on your camera settings. It then bakes those adjustments into the image data. That’s why your camera has all those different ways of setting white balance. Camera settings make a big difference in color outcomes.

If you shot raw (which your camera can't do), you'd have all the color data and could adjust it as you pleased in an editor. Not so with jpeg. The camera throws out one-third to one-half of the image data and edits and compresses what remains.

If you edit color on an uncalibrated monitor, you're likely to be compensating for skewed colors without knowing it. I would wager that your monitor is too warm (heavy on reds and yellows). That would account for the cyan/blue cast in most of the shots you post.

You can't very well express your "tastes" without understanding how cameras adjust color and how monitors render color.

Harsh pen...what were you flying? Did you fly one of the passes in? At that altitude take off can be stressful depending on the temperature and type of aircraft one is flying! The Rockies scare the hell out of me, but maybe that's because I fly a 172.

Hi Foxlets14,It was i who flew in. I was flying a normally aspirated cirrus SR-22. Left from Door County with refuel in Nebraska. Terrain was not too terrible, popped over the front range at Colorado Springs. Arrived on hot afternoon with high density altitudes(14K) which I do not recommend. But Iwas alone with only my mountain bike and half tanks which helped. I think a 172 could do it no problem. I would just plan on a cold morning arrival and departure.

Mike and Sue: I agree with your assessment, but popping over the front range in a cirrus is a piece of cake. In my little bird it would be more of a chugging over like the little engine that could! BTW, I love the SR-22. Wish I could afford one!

It's really easy to tell who's a native and who's not by how fast they tire out during any kind of physical activity.

You should see how fast bands wear out during concerts. I've yet to see one that doesn't complain about how tired they are from lack of oxygen (after only doing a couple of songs, too). I've concluded that this is the reason my favorite bands rarely come here...